}
The fit returns; he foams and bites his chain, }
His eye-balls roll, and he grows mad again. }

The reader may please to observe, the two last lines are taken from
Lee himself in his description of madness in Caesar Borgia, which is
inimitable. Dryden has observed, that there is a pleasure in being
mad, which madmen only know, and indeed Lee has described the
condition in such lively terms, that a man can almost imagine himself
in the situation,

To my charm'd ears no more of woman tell,
Name not a woman, and I shall be well:
Like a poor lunatic that makes his moan,
And for a while beguiles his lookers on;
He reasons well.--His eyes their wildness lose
He vows the keepers his wrong'd sense abuse.
But if you hit the cause that hurt his brain, }
Then his teeth gnash, he foams, he shakes his chain, }
His eye-balls roll, and he is mad again. }

If we may credit the earl of Rochester, Mr. Lee was addicted to
drinking; for in a satire of his, in imitation of Sir John Suckling's
Session of the Poets, which, like the original, is destitute of wit,
poetry, and good manners, he charges him with it.

The lines, miserable as they are, we shall insert;

Nat. Lee stept in next, in hopes of a prize;
Apollo remembring he had hit once in thrice:
By the rubies in's face, he could not deny,
But he had as much wit as wine could supply;
Confess'd that indeed he had a musical note,
But sometimes strain'd so hard that it rattled in the throat;
Yet own'd he had sense, and t' encourage him for't
He made him his Ovid in Augustus's court.

The testimony of Rochester indeed is of no great value, for he was
governed by no principles of honour, and as his ruling passion was
malice, he was ready on all occasions to indulge it, at the expence of
truth and sincerity. We cannot ascertain whether our author wrote any
of his plays in Bedlam, tho' it is not improbable he might have
attempted something that way in his intervals.

Mad people have often been observed to do very ingenious things. I
have seen a ship of straw, finely fabricated by a mad ship-builder;
and the most lovely attitudes have been represented by a mad statuary
in his cell.

Lee, for aught we know, might have some noble flights of fancy, even
in Bedlam; and it is reported of him, that while he was writing one of
his scenes by moon-light, a cloud intervening, he cried out in
ecstasy, "Jove s